Quick facts about DAZN: 

  • Industry: Digital Sports Media 
  • HQ: London, United Kingdom
  • Established: 2016 
  • Web: www.dazn.com

Challenge 

DAZN, a global live and on-demand sports streaming service, has experienced rapid growth, expanding to 2,800 global employees. To grapple with these changes, the company needed a collaborative learning environment for its employees.

Steve Wood, Learning & Development Manager, says: “We needed a visible, central presence where existing employees and new starters could go for their ongoing learning and development.”

Because of the sheer speed of the company’s expansion and employee feedback, the company felt the time was right for a more consistent approach to learning through the introduction of the company’s first learning platform.

Learn365 is a central, visible and easy-to-access resource for every DAZN employee to realize their career potential and grow. It delivers learning directly into people’s daily flow of work through the intranet and Microsoft Teams. The learning resources available support people in creating and keeping alive their personal Career Development Plan and allows employees to evolve with the company.

Steve Wood, Learning & Development Manager

Solution 

The team already had a strong idea about the learning platform they needed.

It was important that the solution plugged in to our Microsoft 365 digital workplace and had Single Sign-On. We wanted to incorporate both internally created material and external content packages into one seamless learning experience.

Steve Wood, Learning & Development Manager

The solution also had to drive efficiencies, allowing a small team to administer an ambitious global learning program. To enable DAZN to find the right learning platform, Wood engaged a broker to identify a small pool of potential suppliers. Of those selected Learn365 stood out, not only because it met DAZN’s requirements (especially around Microsoft 365 integration) but also because of the approach of the Learn team. Steve Wood comments:

They took the time to have a conversation and really understand what we wanted to achieve.

Once a decision had been made to implement Learn365’s learning platform, the team started to configure the platform and prepare course material. In parallel the team worked to clean up Active Directory (AD) data in order to take advantage of Learn365’s powerful targeting capabilities, with learning directed to groups based on AD profiles. The technical deployment process took an impressive total of only six hours and the “Learning Zone” was ready to launch.

Results 

For the first time a central learning platform is available for all DAZN’s employees with easy access through their global intranet.

The seamless integration between Microsoft 365 and Learn365 means users experience a single platform, with course material that is easy to access and find.

The L&D team have also created intranet pages detailing a new competency framework, giving further context to the new training opportunities available.

As DAZN also increases its use of Microsoft Teams to drive collaboration across projects and groups, learning is now expanded and integrated into the platform, bringing learning directly in the employees’ daily workflow.

Relevant courses can be easily embedded into different teams and channels as a separate tab, as well as recommended and discussed by staff.

With the sudden shift to remote work environments as a result of the pandemic, DAZN has been able to quickly develop and deploy relevant content to meet the needs of its employees regarding remote work and mental health directly within the tools employees use every day.

Learn365 is already playing a significant role in driving learning, through:

  • providing new starters with a solid understanding of life at DAZN
  • delivering mandatory training on security management, helping DAZN achieve the ISO27001 standard
  • allowing all employees to understand data privacy and GDPR
  • kickstarting performance development and career development planning processes
  • administering diversity and inclusion training

To achieve the ISO27001 Standard, an international information security certification, the L&D team needed to prove that it has the right training processes, procedures, and systems in place to protect data and information.

It only took half an hour to show the auditors that the business could administer the required reporting. Now there are over 2,560 staff members enrolled in DAZN’s security awareness program and the company is prepared to fly through the next audit.

Steve Wood is delighted how the platform has been received:

The reaction from the business has been very positive. Everyone says it looks fantastic and it is a great tool. People have a real appetite to expand its use.

Future 

With Learn365 now embedded within DAZN, the L&D team plan to expand the range of courses on different topic and in more languages, and formalize the new competency framework, linking courses to each competency using Learn365’s capabilities.

There are also plans to further automate as much learning administration as possible. This will help free up time so the L&D can work closely with different areas of the business to tailor and create learning content. Steve Wood says:

This is an evolution. The people in the business will very much shape the content we include on the platform. We want to create learning and awareness content that will enable employees to get a better understanding of the whole company.

Learn365 has created a way forward for collaborative learning and development across DAZN. Being able to incorporate its everyday tools with the learning platform has enabled DAZN to collaborate in ways that both its previous approach and other existing solutions on the market didn’t offer.

About 

DAZN provides live and on-demand streaming of sporting events to consumers through an app. DAZN has 2,800 employees and is headquartered in the UK. Founded in 2016, the company continues to expand rapidly.